Valkyrie And Misty Knight Are "Fearless Defenders" In Marvel NOW!

The ladies of the Marvel Comics Universe will be taking their own shot at relaunching a classic brand for Marvel NOW! as Valkyrie and Misty Knight team-up for a new ongoing series "Fearless Defenders." Writer Cullen Bunn and relative newcomer artist Will Sliney (best known for his "MacGyver" work at Image) will launch the series in February with covers by Mark Brooks.

The news was announced by the crew at Newsarama, who spoke with Bunn about the unlikely duo driving the series which picks up in some respects from his work on the 12-part "Fear Itself: The Fearless" series that started last year.

"The basic idea of the book is that Valkyrie is choosing a new team of Valkyrior, and she's been asked to choose all these women from the heroes of Midgard, instead of from Asgard," he said. "It is going to be a team book. It'll be an all-female team. But I didn't want to go into issue #1 and say, 'here is the team.' My goal is to take my time in building this team. I want to build it slowly — even after the first arc, the team will not be formed completely.

"I think there are a lot of great female characters in the Marvel Universe who have not been given the chance they need, because maybe they can't support a book all on their own, or maybe they've been on a team and they've been kind of lost in the shuffle for, in some cases, many, many, many years. This is my opportunity to put them all together, and to give them the spotlight."